Preliminaries

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Praise be to Allah, the
Unique, the Besought of All: He does not beget, and He was not begotten. He has
no partners: all things are unlike Him and He is unlike all things. Vision does
not perceive Him, and He perceives all vision. The people cannot grasp Him with
their imagination and we are incapable of describing Him. He is the Originator
of all that exists, and His creation is wholly contingent upon Him. He is
eternal: the First who is beyond beginnings, the Last who is beyond endings,
and the everlasting who is beyond the likeness of all created things. Mankind
cannot comprehend even one of His blessings while His blessings are many. So,
may His blessings be upon the foremost of His prophets, the Righteous and
Truthful (as-Sadiq al-Amin), His slave (`Abdullah), the Liberator
(al-Fateh), the Seal of Prophethood (al-Khatim an-Nubuwwa), the
Sufficient (al-Kafi), the First to be Resurrected (al-Hasher),
the prophesied Prophet, Abu’l Qasem Muhammad b. `Abdillah b. `Abd al-Muttalib صلى الله عليه وآله,
the Messenger of Allah and His mercy to the worlds. May Allah likewise bless
his progeny, who have been purified from uncleanliness; the ones who inherited
the Message and the divinely-appointed Caliphate to protect Allah’s religion
from corruption. May the peace of Allah be upon His worshipers, who have held
onto the Qur’an and Ahl al-Bayt عليهم سلام and lived their life according to the
submission to Allah (Islam).

Islam is the
straight path and our Umma is the intermediate nation. Our religion was established
to satisfy our needs in this world and the next. Out of His infinite majesty
and mercy, Allah revealed His religion to humanity to give us a perfected means
of organizing our lives and societies. As humans, we require systems in the
spheres of politics and legislation, health and sanitation, social and familial
relationships, and philosophical and spiritual fulfillment – and Islam has
delivered all of that. Throughout the continual development of human
civilizations, Allah has steadily built Islam through His communication with
the nations.

He has communicated
to us through His angels, His books, and His representativesعليهم السلام.
Allah’s prophets and their deputies are the models of emulation for any
society: they eat as men should eat, they sleep as men should sleep, they marry
as men should marry, and they are the elite of the elites, set to guide us
through all matters. The final Messenger صلى الله عليه وآله came with the
finality of Allah’s religion, and through Him, Allah revealed the Noble Book
and the Sunna by which all people should abide.

The death of
Muhammadصلى الله عليه وآله marked the end of divine
revelation (wahi), and thus, the religion of Islam was brought to its
final form. But, the representatives of Allah have not left us, as the Prophetصلى الله عليه وآله left the Qur’an and his Householdعليهم السلام to remain as two testaments for us to hold
onto in his absence. The first is the Book of Allah, which are His verbatim
words and Law. The second are the infallible Imams عليهم السلام, who became teachers of the
pure interpretations, the protectors of the divinely-inspired exegesis, the
failsafe leaders and judges, the legatees, the warriors, and the retainers of
the Divine’s secrets. Just as the stars in the sky are a safeguard to the
inhabitants of the heavens, Ahl al-Bayt عليهم السلام are the safeguard for the
inhabitants of the Earth.

The first Imam was
`Ali b. Abi Talib عليه السلام, the Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu’mineen), who
was divinely appointed by the Messenger of Allahصلى الله عليه وآله at Ghadir Khumm. The Imams were appointed
successively by the predecessors, and were leaders in the midst of the people.
They were experts in `aqeedah, jurisprudence, exegesis and hermeneutics,
history, eschatology, and the sayings of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله. Their Shi`a were aware that
the final Imam would soon be born, and would be the awaited one prophesied by
the Messenger صلى الله عليه وآله. That Imam is the Qa’im, the Mahdi, the Proof from the
Household, and Patron of this Affair عليه السلام. The Prophetصلى الله عليه وآله said, “Even if there were only one day left in
this life, Allah will lengthen that day so a man from my progeny may appear and
establish justice and equity on Earth, as it would be fraught with injustice
and oppression”.

As the Imams died
and new Imams were appointed, narrations about the awaited Qa’im were orally
and textually distributed within the Muslim community. It became widely
narrated (mutawater) that the final Imam would be the Qa’im عليه السلام,
who would go into occultation, and then emerge to establish justice. However,
the identity of the Qa’im was in question, as many liars claimed to be the
awaited one, and many Islamic sects mistakenly attributed this position to
earlier personalities. As a result, many of our narrations regarding the Hidden
Imam عليه السلام have reached us via the disbelieving
extremists (ghulat), the liars who intended to further their worldly
agendas, and members of other Shi`i sects. Many narrations have also come to us
through unknown (majhool) transmitters.

The twelfth Imamعليه السلام has fulfilled the prophecies regarding his
birth and occultation, and successfully guided his community for decades. But,
his state in the minor and major occultation did not allow him to prevent the
distribution of inauthentic or fabricated material. Hence, we must return to
scholarly tools of ijtihad to determine which of these narrations come
from reliable sources and which do not.

To initiate this
task, I have resorted to the use of `ilm ad-diraya to separate stronger
narrations from weaker ones. First, I collected a sample of hundreds of
narrations about the Qa’imعليه السلام from various classical books of hadith.
Then, using both modern and classical Imami books of rijal, these
narrations were graded based on a strict standard. This way, we could guarantee
that the final group of narrations in this collection would be the most
reliable.

That being said, one
must consider the following. Firstly, the science of grading chains of
narrators has some subjectivity to it. Not all transmitters labelled as weak
are necessarily always lying, and not all transmitters labelled as reliable are
necessarily always accurate. Some scholars disagreed with each other on the
status of transmitters and how they were to be graded. Moreover, it seems that
a major focus of our rijal books is the combatting of ghulat
transmitters; and not all those associated with extremist beliefs or extremist
individuals were necessarily inaccurate. It must also be considered that
although our standards were strict, those who worked on this project are
fallible people, and therefore some defects may exist in the research. Anything
true is from Allah, and anything false is from us, and we pray that Allah
forgives us for our shortcomings. Lastly, it must be known that only a sample
of the existing hadith corpus was graded, and therefore, it is probable
that much reliable material on this subject exists outside of this book.

For this collection,
we used a variety of classical sources, including al-Kulayni’s al-Kafi,
Saduq’s Kamal ad-Deen, Amali, Khisal, and `Uyoon Akhbar
ar-Rida, Nu`mani’s Ghayba, Tusi’s Ghayba and Tahdheeb,
Saffar’s Basa’ir ad-Darajat, Himyari’s Qurb al-Isnad, and
Muslim’s Sahih. Gradings of ahadith from al-Kafi mostly
coincide with those given by `Allama al-Majlisi in his Mir’at al-`Uqool.
Khoei’s Mu`jam ar-Rijal was used to collect biographical evaluations for
this collection. We did not accept the tawtheeq of narrators present in Kanz
al-`Ummal as a sufficient proof for their reliability. We accepted the
narrators present in Tafsir al-Qummi as mamdooh as opposed to thiqa.
The taraddi and tarahhum of Saduq’s shaykhs were partially
accepted (but explicitly noted) in chains where a technically majhool
shaykh is the only defect. Ibrahim b. Hashim was accepted as thiqa as
opposed to mamdooh or majhool, because he was relied upon by Ibn
al-Walid, Ibn Tawus, and other Shi`i scholars. Many narrations from Tusi’s Ghayba,
Basa’ir ad-Darajat, and Qurb al-Isnad survive through technically
unreliable turuq, and hence, most gradings from these three collections
are based solely on the examination of the isnad. These are highly
esteemed and classical books, and many have argued for their historical
reliability. Their established (mu`tabar) contents are valuable in
understanding the scholarly discourse on Islamic eschatology. The two
narrations from Muslim’s Sahih were included for polemical reasons.

May Allah forgive
our sins, send our salutations to the Hidden Imam عليه السلام, hasten his triumphant
appearance, include us from among his followers, increase our knowledge and
good deeds, accept our dead and our martyrs into Paradise, and have mercy on us
in this world and the next.